NSW Writers' CentreNSW Writers' Centre2017-08-18T01:06:28Zhttp://www.nswwc.org.au/feed/atom/WordPressadminhttp://www.nswwc.org.auhttp://www.nswwc.org.au/?p=164062017-08-18T00:59:39Z2017-08-18T00:59:39ZEach month we shine our spotlight on a member of the NSW Writers’ Centre community to learn more about their writing journey, achievements and inspirations. This month we are delighted to feature Sheila Ngoc Pham, accomplished creative non-fiction writer and 2015 CAL WestWords Western Sydney Emerging Writers’ Fellow.

Sheila grew up in South-West Sydney, reading books set in faraway places and writing letters to pen pals all over the world. She’s worked in many different fields over the years, including public health, radio, digital media, education, and community development. Her work is regularly published and broadcast, and she’s been involved with numerous writing-related events, including the Talking Writing series at NSWWC. She will be chairing a session at the upcoming Boundless: A festival of diverse writers.

Our intern Mia Do spoke to Sheila about identity, the stories behind her published work, and her upcoming projects.

Many of your works – articles, stories, radio programs – evolve around the journey to embody one’s national identity. How does being a Vietnamese woman born and raised in Australia influence your perspective on this topic?

My ideas about national identity have been fundamentally shaped by my family’s experience of becoming refugees displaced from Vietnam, and having to find their feet in Australia. So being Vietnamese is a critical influence – how could it not be – but my thinking is also shaped by being married to an Anglo-Australian and my life is filled with people from all kinds of cultural backgrounds. As an adult, I’ve lived in different countries as well, including the UK, Belgium and Thailand, and each experience has provided fresh insights. Writing is an enormous help in any process of understanding – an example of such a piece I’ve written is ‘Flags of My Father: The Question of National Identity’ in Kill Your Darlings.

What is your typical process of researching for and creating a writing piece/podcast?

Sometimes an idea for a work will be one I’ve had for years, while other times it’s seemingly sudden inspiration. It’s generally a fermentation process that comes out of thinking, reading, listening and having conversations. I keep lots of notes on my phone, in documents on my laptop and in notebooks. I usually spend a lot of time sorting and grouping ideas before I start a more rigorous course of research, including interviews.

Some of the research builds on my formal education, most recently in bioethics. For example, I’ve just written an essay for Ockham’s Razor on ABC Radio National about the graphic medicine movement, looking at how comic books are being used to improve the training of medical doctors and develop their soft skills. This piece draws heavily on academic research.

So that’s how I approach the ‘content’ aspect. In terms of the form of a work, whether it ends up being a particular kind of writing or a certain kind of radio program is usually inspired by what I’m reading or listening to. If I’m ever unsure about how to develop what I’m working on, I’ll engage with other people’s work to help steer me in the right direction.

Your return to Vietnam in 2010, as you recounted on stage for Stories Then and Now and later recorded for ABC Radio National, was modestly told yet so moving and inspiring. How did it confirm/challenge your thoughts about your own Vietnamese identity? What was its impact on your works that followed?

Most writers feel a sense of difference and for me, that feeling is intimately linked with being Vietnamese and feeling at odds with Australian society. It was difficult growing up in Sydney during the 80s and 90s. People would shout out, ‘Go back to where you came from’, yet I had no relationship to Vietnam. So finally visiting in 2010 was one of the watershed moments of my life and, ultimately, it was an empowering experience. I’ve visited a few times since then and each visit confirms it will always be complicated for me. As I wrote last year in Womankind about my most recent trip, when I’m in Vietnam I wear different hats: ‘Australian, Vietnamese, tourist, returnee, foreigner, pilgrim’.

My cultural heritage is a wellspring of ideas and I’ve become more comfortable with the ambiguity which provides a lot of grist for my writing – not just about my own identity, but as a stand-in for broader issues as well. Writing is about constructing meaning as well as illuminating the in-between. My hope is that what I write and produce resonates with a wider audience, because being caught between cultures and identities is hardly particular to me and is a universal story.

In 2012 you produced a program for ABC Radio National called Saigon’s Wartime Beat, featuring Vietnamese wartime singers in the army who followed the troops. What was the experience like for you?

Saigon’s Wartime Beat was an idea I’d had for a few years, based on my interests in rock music and the history of the Vietnam War. When I started working at the ABC, I was in the right place to pitch my idea and was given the opportunity to pursue it.

It was one of the steepest learning curves I’ve ever been on, going from little experience making radio to producing an hour-long documentary. But I’d listened to Radio National since I was young and so it was an immensely rewarding experience to ‘graduate’ from being a listener to being a creator. I learnt lots of new skills, from going out into the field to record a Vietnamese concert in Mt Pritchard, as well as interviewing key people in Australia and the States.

It wouldn’t have been possible for me to make this program without the support of an excellent sound engineer, Louis Mitchell, as well as executive producer, Cathy Peters. It was particularly poignant when my mum opened up about her life when I interviewed her. A lot of her past remains a mystery to me, as she’s not a natural storyteller and making this program created the space for me to hear her. I wrote about this process in ‘Saigon Songs‘ in The Big Issue.

From your experience, what would be some advice, or just some words worth bearing in mind, that you want to give others who are also interested in writing about family and the past?

There are far wiser writers who’ve been on similar journeys, and I find books are essential companions and writing an invaluable tool. Something Cheryl Strayed wrote comes to mind: ‘Your life will be a great and continuous unfolding. It’s good you’ve worked hard to resolve childhood issues while in your twenties, but understand that what you resolve will need to be resolved again. And again.’

In 2015 you were a CAL WestWords Western Sydney Emerging Writers’ Fellow. Congratulations! How did the mentoring experience help develop your writing?

The Fellowship was a wonderful experience. There was the generous financial aspect, of course, and I pursued the opportunity to work with a group of emerging writers to showcase their stories at Africultures.

Being mentored by the inimitable Walter Mason was so helpful. I loved his book Destination Saigon which has superb attention to detail, and written with such warmth and humour while effortlessly bringing in scholarly aspects. Walter patiently read my work and provided lots of useful advice to develop my essay, ‘Black April’, which was published in Southerly’s War and Peace edition. But what I gained most from Walter was how to be a better literary citizen. That’s been a lasting legacy from the fellowship and something I’ve taken very much to heart.

Recently you’ve been involved with Finishing School, which you’ve described as one of your most exciting projects to date. Could you tell us a bit more about this collective?

Finishing School is a collective of talented women at various stages of our writing journeys, and all of us are connected to western Sydney. It’s exciting because we’re all very different and that diversity is a strength. It’s going to be a lot of fun to collaborate as well as develop together.

Having spent most of my life in western Sydney, I understand implicitly why initiatives such as Finishing School are needed to provide support and, to some extent, help level the playing field when it comes to writing. There’s the work of writing and the career of writing, and both aspects can be isolating, particularly as we’re focused on book-length works. Although I have a mentoring role, I require the support as well because writing a book is a daunting task, to say the least!

It’s also exciting to work with my very accomplished friend Felicity Castagna, who’s directing the initiative. We first met at university about 15 years ago because we edited Sydney Uni’s literary journal Hermes in consecutive years. I’m pleased to finally have the chance to collaborate with her in this way.

What are you reading at the moment?

I’m currently reading several books: The Permanent Citizen by Roanna Gonsalves – a collection of short stories, An Omelette and a Glass of Wine by Elizabeth David – a collection of her writings, The Arab of the Future by Riad Sattouf – a graphic novel and Rilla of Ingleside by LM Montgomery – the last novel in the Anne series. They’re all excellent for different reasons.

I’m also reading the incredible Far From the Tree by Andrew Solomon as an ebook on my phone and listening to Rebecca Solnit read her book The Faraway Nearby.

This year I’ve made an effort to always reading one book by someone I know, going back to that idea of being a literary citizen. I’m in the middle of so many because since having a baby I’ve developed a voracious appetite for reading and I always make sure there’s a book anywhere I might get stuck for a while!

In your opinion, who/what is the most inspiring…

Writer/Poet? Viet Thanh Nguyen

Weather? Hot and humid

Time of day? 6am

Music? Arcade Fire

Location? Western Sydney

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To keep up with Sheila’s latest projects, visit her official website. You can also find her on Twitter here.

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Excerpt from Sheila’s latest digital essay, ‘Protection in the sunburnt country: How coral holds the key to a new, reef-friendly sunscreen’, published in the Griffith Review for Science Week:

IN THE SUMMER of 1980–81, a few months before I was born, one of Australia’s most successful public health campaigns of all time was launched. The legendary ‘Slip Slop Slap’ animated commercial featured Sid the Seagull singing a catchy jingle about how we can stop skin cancer by taking the following steps: ‘Slip on a shirt, slop on sunscreen, slap on a hat.’ From that moment on, the distinct fragrance of sunscreen became a feature of summer as much as the smell of chlorine and sea salt. Yet, for many Australians, peeling skin is still as much a part of summer as the greasy white lotion. Caught off guard and unprotected on a glaring day, on occasion I’ve come home red raw, skin overexposed to the harsh UV rays. Despite the wide adoption of sunscreen, Dorothea Mackellar’s description of Australia being ‘a sunburnt country’ still rings as true now as it ever did.

I didn’t realise just how much emphasis we placed on sunscreen until I first moved abroad. One summer, travelling in northern Syria, I stood on the street applying lotion from a large bottle of SPF30+. The beating sun in that part of the world was a shock after my working holiday in London. I slopped the sunscreen over my face and exposed arms without thinking anything of it while some men nearby watched. One came over with a grin on his face and gestured at the bottle. I squirted a blob onto his palm and said ‘the sun,’ pointing to the sky. I watched him awkwardly mimic the act of rubbing in sunscreen, presumably for the first time ever, and he laughed as he did it. I laughed as well, realising how comical the situation must have seemed to the locals.

]]>0adminhttp://www.nswwc.org.auhttp://www.nswwc.org.au/?p=163152017-08-17T00:46:30Z2017-08-17T00:46:30ZBarbara Brooks has published short memoir, essays and fiction, and an acclaimed biography, Eleanor Dark: A Writer’s Life. Her essays and stories have been published in Europe, Asia and the US as well as Australia. She is a highly regarded teacher of writing and has taught at a number of universities.

How did you come to write memoir professionally?It’s the genre that gave me my voice. Short memoir, or essay. I like the mystery and clarity of ‘what really happened.’ There’s a closeness, an intimate knowledge, and I like the way I can use my own observations and experience to reflect a shared experience of the larger world.

In your opinion, what makes a good memoir?
In Vivian Gornick’s book on memoir, The Situation and the Story, she says the situation is the set of circumstances, the events; the story is what you as the writer have come to say about what happened. That sense of story interests me – the realisation, the understanding. Apart from that, writing that comes alive, honesty, a sense of a wider context.

What challenges come with writing memoir that you don’t get in fiction writing?
You have to stick to the facts, which some fiction writers find frustrating. I like the challenge of working with events, memories, histories – and shaping them. You’re writing about real people, people you know, perhaps your family, your ex-husband, your children. How do you do this? It can be a challenge but we have to rise to it.

]]>0adminhttp://www.nswwc.org.auhttp://www.nswwc.org.au/?p=163432017-08-16T05:33:59Z2017-08-16T05:24:59ZStark white mourning caps, moulded from gypsum and weighing up to seven kilos, were fitted over the shaven skulls of Aboriginal mourners in the Simpson Desert; the grieving period lasting until the caps fell off and were laid on the grave. Not to be properly mourned was a terrible thing.

A deep and poetic probing of the nature of grief, Lia Hills’ The Crying Place is the story of Saul, a 30-something ‘whitefella’, whose closest friend Jed has died by suicide, and who, in the process, finds that “the past is a living, breathing thing.”

Saul’s quest to understand what had happened to his best friend leads him first to a rundown boarding house that Jed had said “suited his wanderlust”. Inserted in a poetry book, Saul finds a picture of Nara, an Aboriginal woman, of whom he later recalls Jed saying, “She’s become my country.” Rather than attend a Hobart funeral service, Saul drives north to find her. “They’d bury him in their own way. In the end neither Jed nor I would have a say in it.”

Between Melbourne and Coober Pedy the back story of Jed and Saul emerges. Flashbacks to their Derwent riverside adolescence and subsequent adventuring, motorcycling through the Sahara De-sert and other remote locales, are interwoven with sketches of the people and places they encountered along the way.

After Saul meets German-born Ziggy – “I’m the right kind of illegal immigrant. Right colour.” – they drive up to the McDonnell ranges to Arrernte country. Despite a mutual attraction, Saul drives off west and alone, bound for Pitjantjatjara country; trying to track down Jed’s ghost, as Ziggy suggests. He finds Nara in a remote Western Desert community and gains some insights. How to “mourn what must be mourned” and that “no man burdened with guilt ever put a sure foot into the future.”

Although there is some stylistic unevenness – possibly a product of the combination of the voice-recognition software Hills used to ‘write’ the first draft, and the modifications made, as is made clear in the Author’s Note, after the book was checked with Aboriginal Australian organisations and individuals as to ensure “what material … was appropriate to include and in what form” – this intriguing and subtle novel ultimately reads as a metaphor for the tragedies of failure to comprehend and appreciate the oldest of Australian cultures.

John Mancy is a former barrister, foreign correspondent, publisher, editor, radio newsreader and casual law lecturer.

Climate change is the crisis of this generation. Speaking at NSW Writers’ Centre’s Speculative Fiction Festival, Australian author James Bradley argued that as our defining social condition, the global environmental emergency provides the backdrop to literature written today.

“All fiction now is anthropocene fiction,” he said in response to a question concerning the shifting attitudes towards climate change in writing over the past few years.

Bradley recently authored the YA novel The Silent Invasion, depicting a future where space alien spores threaten to destroy life on earth. He was joined by fellow speculative fiction writers Daniel Findlay, Cat Sparks and moderator Jane Rawson on the panel.

While sci-fi has traditionally dealt with distant, often technologically oriented futures, the emerging cli-fi sub-genre, which incorporates post-apocalyptic and dystopian tropes, addresses the present day urgency of environmental degradation. The worlds it depicts feels much more like the current one we stand upon.

Like sci-fi, cli-fi holds a great potential to engage with activist narratives, where alternative “social and economic solutions” to real and imagined threats can be posed. Does speculative fiction draw guidelines on how to best navigate the future then, asked Rawson?

It’s a way to steer through denial and despair, Bradley answered. For him, writing is a tool used to fight against the disempowering nature of climate change and to not fall into the trap of being a “passive citizen.”

However, Sparks, who just released her debut novel Lotus Blue, said that while there is power in speculative stories. “It doesn’t have cultural resonance because no-one takes it seriously. Its power to deliver the message got overshadowed by its tropes.”

The panellists also discussed how they shape their dystopic worlds through the manipulation of language conventions, to envision how new forms of communication may emerge hundreds of years later.

Findlay released his debut post-apocalyptic novel Year of the Orphan earlier this year, in which scavengers try to survive in the brutal Australian outback Mad Max style. The dialect spoken in the novel stitches together a “pastiche” of languages, a vision he described as how “oral storytelling would sound like centuries from now.”

For his book The Silent Invasion, Bradley said it was very much about deliberately finding “a language that was stripped back and clean” to heighten the eerie atmosphere of the novel.

Speaking about the challenges and differences in world-building and the writing process, Sparks said that “you learn to play to your strengths.” Stories come to her visually: “it plays like a movie in my head.” On the other side of the spectrum, Bradley “works from the inside”, concerning himself with rhythm, feeling and texture.

Findlay is more pragmatic, describing how he has two documents for writing, one for ideas, and one for the actual story.

There are higher stakes involved in telling science fiction stories today, where the real enemy is no longer pegged on outer-space aliens but towards our own species. In a world where human actions accelerate rising sea tides and extreme temperature changes, speculative fiction is less concerned with creating the future than actually strategising ways to process our current times. It boils down to the question Bradley poses: “How do I make this make sense to myself?”

This recap written by NSWWC intern Amelia Zhou. The Future We Deserve: From sci fi to cli fi was a panel at the 2017 Speculative Fiction Festival.

]]>0adminhttp://www.nswwc.org.auhttp://www.nswwc.org.au/?p=163492017-08-15T05:53:23Z2017-08-15T05:48:43ZSometimes there are characters that are just so complex and so nuanced, that capturing them on a page can be overwhelming. This can be even more difficult when those characters also happen to be real-world historical figures. In Half Wild, author Pip Smith re-examines the life of Eugenia Falleni – a trans man from New Zealand, charged with the death of his wife, Annie Birkett.

A key challenge Smith faces in this novel is describing the experience of a trans person within an unsympathetic world. Despite the character’s transition to Harry Crawford, they are forced (after an arrest for murder and a very public exposure by the media) to reassume their previous identity of Eugenia Falleni. They are described in papers as a ‘man-woman’, and treated with suspicion by judge and jury alike. While it is difficult as a modern reader to stomach, Half Wild is a reminder of what Sydney was like at the turn of the 20th Century: brutal, dirty and terrifying.

The story of Falleni has been well-documented – it is not the suspense, but the delivery which keeps Half Wild pushing forward. Smith works closely with historical sources, and details the trial almost exclusively through contemporary newspaper coverage and transcripts. This is at times jarring, as the novel jumps from one source to another, and reflects how we still experience and consume sensational murder trials today. During this section, Smith shifts the point-of-view to first person plural. She writes,

“We could feel the skin beneath our collars. How tender it was, how soft. For a second, we thought we could feel the scratch of a rope being slipped around our necks”.

This is a genius effect, as the reader becomes just the same as the curious and gruesome onlookers, watching as Falleni is convicted of murder and sentenced to death.

The narration jumps around, with each character at times describing the action. While this technique does extend the disjointed effect, it also creates a lack of focus and at times undermines the dramatic irony of the story.

One of the most successful elements of Half Wild is how Smith maintains the mystery around what actually happened to Annie Birkett. She elegantly casts doubt over Falleni’s testimony, and calls into question the evidence in the case. Is Falleni a master-mind, switching identities for protection? Or was the trial blinded by sensationalism and destined to failure? Who knows?

Centine Wilbello: inner blessed in the Inner West.

]]>0adminhttp://www.nswwc.org.auhttp://www.nswwc.org.au/?p=160832017-08-14T05:09:20Z2017-08-14T05:09:20ZJennifer Maiden returns triumphantly and with a diligence enviable to most poets. The Metronome is her third poetry collection in as many years, jam-packed full of her famed conversational vignettes.

Some time ago I reviewed Maiden’s Drones and Phantoms, so to discover another collection teeming with imagined conversations between historical figures was less about being disappointed with similarity and more about being thrilled at finding a poet so intent on developing her own trope.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – nothing quite compares to the experience of reading Maiden. She is so thrillingly imaginative and her self-reflexivity is charming and often brave.

The book’s very first poem ‘Metronome’ winks at us as if to say, ‘good to see we’re in this together’ as she deftly, subtly hints at her most famous style. “Binary metre belongs/to life’s basic history,” she writes, signalling her intent to thrall us with the binaries of her dialogues between anyone from Jane Austen and Tanya Plibersek to Eleanor Roosevelt and Hillary Clinton.

Some of the book’s best poems, however, are the more conventional ones – those that dispense with Maiden’s famous conversations. ‘Lucky Cat. Money Cat Brings Money’ is a visualised delight of the ubiquitous golden motorised cats in Asian restaurants that morphs unexpectedly (for Maiden’s poems are seldom straightforward) into a parallel metaphor for capitalism. ‘The Stock Exchange belongs only in China./They love the shining chance of it,/and then the golden need for much/spurring and pullback, the antique/warhorse who needs tenderness,/’

It’s so easy to find yourself thinking you are reading about shop cats or the Yarra River when you’re actually reading about corporate greed or austerity, or immigration. And the whole delightful premise is both an exercise in and testament to Maiden’s terrifically clever use of language, which is not only intellectual, but funny, decorous, and sly. There’s even a poem called ‘Jennifer Maiden woke up outside the Fourth Wall,’ which made me belly chuckle to myself on the light rail – a feat not easily achieved with poetry.

Maiden’s collections have won the NSW and Victorian Premier’s Awards for Poetry, and the Victorian Premier’s Award for Literature among others, and it’s not difficult to see why. What we have here is truly accessible poetry that everyone can enjoy and no one need fear attempting. There’s no flowery verse or tricky corners, just a unique amalgam of social commentary and poetry, which feels at times less like reading poetry and more like a soothing Saturday lift-out from a moderate newspaper. The Metronome is another star in Maiden’s prolific sky that is not to be missed.

Louise Jaques is a poet. In 2016, she appeared as a featured artist at the National Young Writers’ Festival, and was shortlisted for the Scribe Nonfiction Prize. In 2015, she was editor of the 29th UTS Writers’ Anthology, Strange Objects Covered With Fur. You can find her on Twitter here.

]]>0adminhttp://www.nswwc.org.auhttp://www.nswwc.org.au/?p=164282017-08-14T05:05:54Z2017-08-14T05:05:54ZLee Kofman is the author of four books, including the memoir The Dangerous Bride, and is co-editor of Rebellious Daughters, an anthology of prominent Australian memoirists. Her short works have been widely published in Australia, UK, Scotland, Israel, Canada and US. She’s worked as a writing mentor and teacher for 14 years.

What do you think makes memoir such a popular genre?

The attraction might be in part because this genre reflects the zeitgeist of our blogging and reality show era. We have developed an appetite for the ‘true’. But I think the main reason is the relative youth of this genre. While it is discovering its own ways, it is more open to experimentation, surprise and subversion.

How has the memoir genre changed since it first became popular? What is possible with memoir writing these days?

A typical memoir used to be one person’s ‘redemptive narrative’, a quite didactic format of ‘the lessons I learned’. Nowadays the authors are more prepared to sit with existential uncertainty instead of opting for neat resolutions. The best memoirs are not ‘lessons’, but rather quests. Plus, personal stories are sometimes situated within the larger world and incorporate research, and cultural and social commentary.

What does it mean to be emotionally honest?

Emotional honesty is the ability to find distance when writing about your difficult experience; the skill for self-scrutiny; the readiness to admit your inconsistencies and paradoxes, and to argue with yourself on the page. In short, it is the best and the hardest part in memoir writing.

]]>0adminhttp://www.nswwc.org.auhttp://www.nswwc.org.au/?p=160662017-08-09T01:32:35Z2017-08-09T01:32:35ZIn the summer of 1892, Andrew Borden and his second wife, Abby, were viciously murdered in their Fall River home with an axe. Andrew’s daughter, Elizabeth (Lizzie), was tried for the murders but later acquitted.

See What I Have Done by debut author Sarah Schmidt is a fictional retelling of those infamous murders. This account focuses on the events leading up to the deaths of Lizzie Borden’s father and stepmother, in particular, the days before and after the murders. The narrative is presented through the eyes of four characters — Lizzie Borden; Lizzie’s sister, Emma, who at the time of the murders was out of town; the young Irish maid, Bridget; and a damaged stranger called Benjamin.

This book gets deep under your skin, like a splinter driven under your nails that you can’t pull out. It is creepy and disturbing, unsettling and sinister.

The setting is vivid. Throughout, I felt oppressed by heat, viscerally disgusted by rancid food and sickness, and mired in the oppression and dysfunction of the situation.

Schmidt does a remarkable job of curving her words to reveal the depths of the twisted relationships within this terrible tale. The malignant relationship between Emma and Lizzie is magnificently portrayed. She creates tension and grips you within for long periods of time. Her Lizzie chapters are especially powerful and pick, pick, pick at your emotions. A master of time, Schmidt will slow it down so you experience every shocking second, speed it up so you strain and push to keep up and fracture it to leave you confused and unsettled.

‘The clock on the mantel ticked ticked’.

I liked how I was left guessing as to the implied identity of the murderer, swinging back and forth between suspects, up until the last quarter of the book. The start in particular was compelling and drew me in; the middle so electrifying, I couldn’t put it down. My only disappointment was that I felt the ending was a little drawn out. This was possibly done to tie all loose ends, but with a book like this, it might have been better to leave the ends frayed.

See What I Have Done is a marvellously written thriller and a chilling take on the infamous, unsolved Borden murders. Well worth a read – but prepare to be disturbed.

Renee Mihulka is an avid reader, an aspiring author with three manuscripts on submission, and a mum of three. You can find out more about her on her website.

]]>0adminhttp://www.nswwc.org.auhttp://www.nswwc.org.au/?p=160392017-08-03T01:47:20Z2017-08-03T00:52:41ZHer Mother’s Secret by Natasha Lester begins on Armistice Day, 1918, in a small town in England. Leonora (Leo) East has spent the war helping her father run his chemist while making women’s cosmetics on the side. Her dream is to change the way the world perceives cosmetics and the women who wear them. When her father succumbs to influenza, Leo makes the decision to travel to New York, the new frontier of opportunity, to make her cosmetics dream come true. But a chance meeting with dashing department store owner, Everett Forsyth, alters her life irrevocably. Flash forward twenty years and Everett’s daughter, Alice, is a promising ballerina who has been asked by the head of a large cosmetics firm to star in a line of advertisements. Alice is thrilled, but her parents are not.

Her Mother’s Secret is a story of determination, honour, and enduring love; I drank it in, pushing past designated bedtimes to finish it in the early hours of the morning. I loved how determined Leo was to succeed when the very fabric of society was against her.

This is a comfortable read and I mean that in the best possible way, in that the writing allows you to fall into the story and the time. As a work of historical fiction, a sense of place is vitally important and this book delivers, bringing post-war, 1920s New York to life. Lester’s descriptions and her insightful observations of the time are superb; historical details are weaved in without bogging down the story, which clips along at a satisfying pace.

Lester’s background as Marketing Manager for Maybelline cosmetics goes a long way to explain the passion around cosmetics inserted into the pages. In fact, the company’s founding story of a girl named Mabel whose brother mixed up a concoction of lampblack and Vaseline, (Mabel + Vaseline = Mabelline) so she could have darker lashes, was an inspiration behind the book.

This book definitely lives up to the success Lester earned with A Kiss From Mr Fitzgerald. It also follows on with the theme from that book — the struggle of women against society’s beliefs and prejudices, which is always a worthwhile and fascinating topic.

If I had a slight criticism it would be that Leo and Everett are sometimes too good to be true — too selfless, too forgiving. But then, I’m always willing to suspend disbelief when it concerns an enduring love story and a strong woman who has to fight for her dreams.

Renee Mihulka is an avid reader, an aspiring author with three manuscripts on submission, and a mum of three. You can find out more about her on her website.

Thang Ngo runs the blog noodlies, one of Australia’s most influential food and lifestyle blogs. A blogger for 17 years, his writing has been published in Good Food, Feast Magazine, the Drum and Tigerair’s inflight magazine. He is also a contributor for the SBS News opinion section.

What were your expectations when you first started your blog?

I started blogging because I had a passion, but had no goals and pretty much no idea. There wasn’t much advice for beginners. I learned through trial and error. There are quick wins that can save so much time.

How has blogging changed since you started 17 years ago?

Blogging was so much harder those days, I used MS Frontpage. There wasn’t much choice and most platforms weren’t intuitive. Now is the perfect time to start blogging, the tools and platforms are so much easier. Most are free. That gives you the head space to be creative rather than fiddle with software.

What’s your top tip for attracting an audience to read your blog?

Be authentic. Don’t write something just because you think it will attract more readers. There are seven billion people in the world. If 0.1% of them are interested in your topic, that’s seven million potential readers.

When ABC’s Australian Story aired ‘My Son Sam,’ the story of Dr James Best taking his autistic son, Sam, on a gap year of sorts through Southern Africa, the ensuing commentary always came back to the very premise of the trip – displacement as a positive intervention for an autistic brain during its second period of peak neuroplasticity. This trip was not only a story between father and son, but a jumpstart into a new conversation about autism that is equal parts controversial and interesting. Dr Best’s book Sam’s Best Shot chronicles this leap into the unknown. Join him and CEO of Autism Awareness Australia, Nicole Rogerson, for the launch of this memoir. Gleebooks, 6:30pm. More information available here.

August 8 & 16: Talking This Is Not a Wine Guide with Chris Morrison

Guillame sommelier Chris Morrison has released a wine guide cheekily titled This Is Not a Wine Guide. Morrison’s book hopes to help readers develop confidence in their sober decisions about wine by teaching them to listen to their own sense of taste. The award winning sommelier will be in-conversation with Terry Durack, the Sydney Morning Herald’s chief restaurant critic, at 6:30pm on August 8 at Potts Point Bookshop; and in-conversation with Callan Boys, Fairfax Media national food and drink writer, at 6:30pm on August 16, upstairs at Better Read Than Dead, Newtown. Tickets for August 8 available here.Tickets for August 16 available here.

August 10: The Mystery Gut Book Launch

Calling gut health a ‘fad’ seems like a bit of a misnomer, yet lifestyle bloggers and influencers have somehow managed to wrangle this fundamental part of our constitution into just that. Whilst talk of the gut is all the rage these days, the science behind it – as told by actual professionals – is positively docile by comparison. The Mystery Gut is a complete guide to common gut conditions and improving gut health, based on medical research and authored by health practitioners Professor Kerryn Phelps AM, Dr Claudia Lee and Jaime Rose Chambers. Join them for the launch of The Mystery Gut at Harry Hartog Bondi Juction, 6:30pm.Click here for more information.

August 10: The 91-Storey Treehouse

Australia’s most popular kids book duo Andy Griffiths and his artistic offsider Terry Denton are taking over Sydney Town Hall on 10 August to launch the latest instalment of ‘The 91-Storey Treehouse!’ The seventh book in the series adds 13 new levels including the world’s most powerful whirlpool, a mashed-potato-and-gravy train and a human pinball machine. Sydney Town Hall, 6-7pm. Tickets here.

August 11: Laugh Your Arts Off

Get more than just your giggle on at Laugh Your Arts Off – the Arts Law Centre’s annual comedy fundraiser; support the arts community in the process too! Arts Law is an independent national community legal centre that services the arts community in Australia, and provides free or low cost specialised legal advice, education and resources to Australian artists and arts organisations across all art forms. Featuring a diverse range of comedic styles, the evening promises to dazzle and delight your comedic sensibilities. Giant Dwarf, Redfern, 8pm.Tickets available here.

August 12: Voice in Writing

The importance of voice in writing can hardly be overstated. No two voices are the same, and mastering your own can be a challenge even at the best of times. In this workshop, Dr William (Bill) Pascoe, a Digital Humanities specialist with the Centre For 21st Century Humanities and the Centre for Literary and Linguistic Computing at the University of Newcastle will dissect what makes other authors’ voices so distinct and help you unpack the features of your own style. Hunter Writers’ Centre, Merewether, 10am-2pm.Tickets available here.

August 16: Melina Marchetta at the Forum

Melina Marchetta hardly needs an introduction. The highly acclaimed Australian author (two-time winner of the CBCA Book of the Year, the Michael L. Printz Award, ABIA Award, the Aurealis Fantasy Award, and longlisted for the the Miles Franklin Award) will be in conversation with the Italian Family History Group about both her writing and how her family history is incorporated. This year marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of her debut novel, Looking for Alibrandi, in which Marchetta’s own experience of her Italian heritage played an instrumental role in the book’s writing. A book signing will conclude the evening. Italian Forum Cultural Centre, Leichhardt, 7pm.Tickets at the door, more information available here.

August 18: Pitch a Classic Today

Is there such a thing as a new idea? Mark Twain didn’t think so. With this in mind, four Sydney writers and comedians re-imagine and re-write a classic book of their choosing hoping to persuade their audience of its viability today. In an event where anything is possible, this is bound to be a fun and funny Friday night. Woollahra Library at Double Bay, 6:30pm.Tickets available here.

August 19: Honouring Jessica Anderson

In this year’s Honouring Australian Writers event NSW Writers’ Centre pays tribute to two-time Miles Franklin Award-winner Jessica Anderson (1916 – 2010). Anderson was the author of seven novels – including Tirra Lirra by the River and The Impersonators – as well as an award-winning short story collection and numerous radio plays. Join us as authors Anna Funder (Stasiland) and Michelle de Kretser (Questions of Travel) discuss the enduring power of Anderson’s work with publisher and literary critic Geordie Williamson. With contributions from Jessica Anderson’s daughter, the screenwriter Laura Jones, and a reading of Anderson’s work by poet and author Pip Smith (Half Wild). State Library of NSW, 2.30-4.00pm. Head over here for more info.

August 19 & 20: Masterclass With William Yang

There are as many ways to tell a story as there are ways to skin a cat. This two-day masterclass with William Yang will explore performative storytelling with pictures, as is emblematic of Yang’s practice. Participants will also be able to create their own performative short stories using personal memories and memorabilia. Carriageworks, Eveleigh, 10am.More information available here.

August 22: Sam Dastayari In-Conversation with Craig Reucassel

Having introduced Pauline Hanson to the Halal Snack Pack, Sam Dastayari is now onto his next big reveal. This time it’s about his life– changing his name to fit in, joining the Labor Party as a teenager, his cats Trotsky and Lenin, and mosh pits at the school nativity play. Dastayari will be in-conversation with Chaser funnyman Craig Reucassel in a not to be missed event. Gleebooks, Glebe, 6:30pm. Tickets available here.

August 25: Queerstories

Stories are the bedrock of forging human connection and understanding. The LGBTQIA community has been sharing stories for centuries, creating self-determined histories, disrupting and reinventing conventional ideas about narrative, family, love and community. Hosted by Maeve Marsden, join some of Sydney’s best storytellers for a night of tales about identity, the moments that shape us and other unexpected subjects. Line up TBA. This event is auslan interpreted. Giant Dwarf, Redfern, 7:30pm.Tickets available here.

]]>0adminhttp://www.nswwc.org.auhttp://www.nswwc.org.au/?p=159132017-07-31T00:30:02Z2017-07-31T00:26:17ZIt’s 1985 and Nancy Drew is surrounded by the cast of Clueless.

Wait, no.

It’s Ursula Flowerbutton’s first day at Oxford where she is about to start her journey as an undergraduate among the rich and elite. Ursula is a middle class girl in the midst of, not just the super wealthy, but also, the royals (or their distant relatives). But she might as well be Nancy Drew (a clever, prim and proper virgin) thrown in with Cher Horowitz’s crowd in 1985.

The book, Party Girls Die in Pearls, starts with Ursula’s first day on campus. She is excited to make a new friend on her first day in the form of glamorous American freshman, Nancy Feingold – someone who has a limitlessly fashionable wardrobe, a mouth with no stop button, and a flood of invites for all the parties that matter. Ursula is okay with not being invited because her plan is to immerse herself in her studies and try her journalism skills at the famous student paper, Cherwell.

But things don’t go as planned when Ursula discovers the body of the school’s “It” girl, Lady India Brattenbury, inside her tutor’s place – throat sliced while still in last night’s party dress. Although Ursula has read all the Agatha Christie novels, she’s not prepared to deal with the mystery she’s gotten herself into. The problem is that the Cherwell editor, Jago, wants her to write the murder piece herself. And in order to write an amazing article, Ursula has to solve the case.

With Nancy’s help, Ursula follows lead after lead to find out who among the wealthy undergrads killed their Queen Bee. Nancy is a ‘sidekick’ who is as colourful and helpful as the protagonist herself, and her quest to find herself a man with royal blood is as hilarious as her deductive skills are impressive.

Party Girls Die in Pearls is Plum Sykes’ third novel and the first book in the Oxford Girl Mystery series. It throws you into the world of shoulder pads and hair teased so high the bottles of hairsprays used were responsible for the hole in the ozone layer. The protagonist experiences first hand just how affluent–with their exclusive black tie parties, different ball gowns every night, relationship dramas and affairs to rival that of soap operas­–these kids are.

Sykes makes it easy for her readers to follow the 1980s cultural references (given that some readers were probably not yet born then) and the intricacies of life as an aristocrat (because who is an aristocrat these days?) by adding asterisks and explaining them in footnotes.

Being a fashion journalist, Sykes’ experience in the fashion world is immediately discernible. The descriptions of clothes and hairstyles for both men and women popular in the ’80s are described in such vivid detail that it brings back nostalgic memories (or alternatively, conveys just how weird the pieces were for those who have never worn them).

Party Girls Die in Pearls is a fun mystery read, filled with interesting characters in a world that fascinates a lot of readers – the world of the rich and spoiled. You can add this book to your to-read list.

Kristyn M. Levis is a freelance writer, author and photographer based in Sydney. She is currently the managing editor of Her Collective. Her first novel is set to be published this year.